Users of online systems frequently enter queries that include names of entities of interest. For example, users of geographic information and mapping systems enter queries for locations of interest. The queries may include names such as street names, city names, state names, and the like, which reference geographic entities stored within a geographic database of the system. In many instances, a particular portion of the query could plausibly be spelled both as a single word (“compounded form”) and as multiple words (“decompounded form”), where only one of these is correct for a given name. For these types of words users often use the incorrect form when spelling the query. For example, a particular street might actually have an original name “Green Wood Street” within the geographic database but could very plausibly also be spelled “Greenwood Street.” However, a user entering a query with the spelling “Greenwood Street” would not be presented with the geographic entity for that particular street within the query results, since the compounded form of the name in the query (“Greenwood Street”) does not literally match the decompounded form of the name in the geographic database (“Green Wood Street”). Thus, in these situations users would frequently fail to be provided with the information that they were seeking.